Mobile users: can 911 emergency locate you after you call?

According to the FCC, your chances of being located with precision after you …

Nine years ago Karla Gutierrez lost control of her BMW and it careened into a canal. As the vehicle slipped into the water, Gutierrez called Miami, Florida 911 on her mobile phone.

"My car is sinking!" she cried to the operator.

"Ma'am, I know," the dispatch respondent replied. "You need to calm down, OK? I know you are in the water, and you are sinking, but if I don't know where you are at, we can't help you."

"My car is sinking!" Gutierrez screamed again. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" For three minutes, the operator tried to coax her to approximate her location, then the phone went dead. Eventually first responders found her in her car, drowned.

Almost a decade later, the Federal Communications Commission says that up to 40 percent of mobile device emergency calls still don't provide immediate or quick and precise caller location data. "The inaccuracy is not just a few feet, but up to one or two miles—and sometimes no location information at all," noted FCC Chair Julius Genachowski on Thursday.

And so the agency has released tougher rules to improve your chances of being found by an emergency responder via your mobile. These regulations require carriers to certify that they're in sync with the agency's requirements for location accuracy at more precise geographic levels than before.

Tighter focus

Up until this decision, the Commission's rules required percentages of location accuracy from carriers across Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) or Rural Service Areas (RSAs). The Census Bureau defines an MSA as a "core urban area of 50,000 or more population." An RSA is a defined region in which carriers offer service to rural markets (map of all MSAs and RSAs here).

Now carriers will have to phase in location accuracy on the more precise county or Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) service area level. PSAPs are first responder agencies, and the geographic areas they serve are not infrequently the same as counties. If PSAP acronym sounds a bit vague, the FCC has a public database of them that offer a sense of what they are in real life—police departments, fire departments, hospitals, airport emergency services operations, and sheriffs offices, all with designated geographical regions to protect.

How accurate must carriers be? The Commission's current "Phase II" E-911 rules require mobiles to provide caller latitude and longitude within six minutes of a request by a PSAP. The location data has to be correct to within 50 to 300 meters, "depending on the type of technology used."

Now the agency has additional rules for networked-based and mobile-based positioning systems (the differences explained here). For networked-based mobile positioning technologies, these calls must accurately identify locations at 100 meters 67 percent of the time, and correctly at 300 meters 90 percent of the time.

Here's how the agency expects these new standards to be rolled out in the case of 100 meters.

(i) One year from [effective date of the Order], carriers shall comply with this standard in 60 percent of counties or PSAP service areas. These counties or PSAP service areas must cover at least 70 percent of the population covered by the carrier across its entire network.

(ii) Three years from [effective date of the Order], carriers shall comply with this standard in 70 percent of counties or PSAP service areas. These counties or PSAP service areas must cover at least 80 percent of the population covered by the carrier across its entire network.

(iii) Five years from [effective date of the Order], carriers shall comply with this standard in 100% of counties or PSAP service areas covered by the carrier.

For handset-based technologies, two years from now locations must be accurately identified within 50 meters for 67 percent of calls, and 150 meters for 80 percent of calls.

Carriers can, however, exempt as much as 15 percent of county/PSAP service areas (but no more) from the 150 meter requirement "based upon heavy forestation that limits handset-based technology accuracy in those counties or PSAP service areas."

VoIP

At the same time, the Commission is also asking for feedback on ways to improve caller location identifiability for "Next Generation 911" services ("NG911").

Among the questions that the NOI asks is, should VoIP providers be required to forward location data to PSAPs without the customer's "active cooperation"? The FCC's current rules don't mandate this, but the Commission has tentatively concluded that VoIP providers should be required to use automatic location technologies as do wireless providers.

This promises to be a complicated debate, with many organizations already on-the-record on the question. The Association of Public-Safety Officials and the Rural Cellular Association support the requirement, the latter calling parity between IP telephony based wireless services and VoIP "reasonable and appropriate."

The Telecommunications Industry Association thinks less of the idea. "If the FCC decides to impose similar location accuracy standards on interconnected VoIP providers that are applicable to [commercial wireless] services, the Commission would be forced to regulate the entity providing the broadband Internet connection (i.e. restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, municipalities, etc.)," the group has warned.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.